By Beck Heslop, PhD Researcher ESRC-funded placement ‘Fuel Poverty and the Benefits Stigma’
The cost of fuel can cause notable hardship for families and the elderly. Original caption: A woman and two children in poor housing conditions, England, London, 1981. (Photo by Jim Rice/Avalon/Getty Images)
The British public responded with horror following investigative reporting by The Times that found British Gas admitted disconnecting the gas supplies of vulnerable families. Yet, what seems like a recent aberration or a failure in policy is neither a new nor uncommon experience for those in poverty. In 1976, over 38,000 households across Britain were disconnected from their gas supply, and over 114,000 from their electricity. During the 1980s, the annual totals rocketed to peaks of above 60,000 and 120,000 respectively. Yet in 2021, Ofgem reported there had been no electricity, and just 21 gas, disconnections. Although disconnection is, thankfully, now a relatively rare event, its impact on the most vulnerable does not make it any less distressing. Here we suggest notable continuities in the operation of the gas and electricity industries, which are of upmost importance as inflation and the issue of fuel costs continues to disproportionately impact poor families and those on benefits. By highlighting the ways in which hostility towards debtors has driven changing disconnection practices, we can see how these policies continue contribute to the hardship of those in poverty from the late 1970s into the present day.
Disconnections have long captured the attention of the media, anti-poverty campaigners, and the public at large – just as they do today. Stories of pensioners suffering hypothermia for fear of running into fuel debt, and of fatal house fires in disconnected households populated headlines during the 1970s and 80s. Knocked-over candles in disconnected households were responsible for the fires that killed a 9-year old boy in 1976 and 60-year-old man in 1987 – both in Liverpool. The ‘Old and Cold’ was a similar source of press attention. The two cases of elderly women aged in their eighties, who were discovered dead in their homes having frozen to death for fear of running up fuel bills, were considered particularly shameful since both had been known to social services. Public outcry over these recurring incidents contributed to mounting pressure on the government to abolish the right to disconnect.
Original caption: 80 year old Vera Yeardley, her only heat is from a coal fire on which she burns cinders and low quality fuel. Stoke, Coventry. 14th February 1985. (Photo by Coventry Telegraph Archive/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)
In a move designed to placate these vocal critics, the fuel industries instituted a Code of Practice in December 1976. the Code was a voluntary statement from the gas and electricity boards, committing to delay disconnection for consumers in genuine hardship, giving them time to liaise with social services or social security to establish (re)payment arrangements. It also stipulated that disconnections would only occur in the presence of a responsible adult, unless there was a warrant. However, it did not take long for welfare and advice organisations to realise the Code was failing to achieve the ‘radical minimisation of the hardship of disconnection.’ Despite an initial dip in 1977 and 1978, electricity disconnections began trending upwards again, surging past their pre-code levels by 1980. Meanwhile, there were only marginal changes in gas disconnections. A review by the Policy Studies Institute (PSI) in, found that 90% of all disconnections took place in all-pensioner households, families with children under 11, or where the breadwinner was receiving supplementary benefit. These were the very people who met the definition of ‘potential hardship’ as defined in the Code.
At the same time, broader negative attitudes towards those who claimed state welfare that underpinned Thatcherite policies of state retrenchment shaped the responses of fuel boards, who characterised debtors as either wilful non-payers or irresponsible consumers. Disconnection powers were defended as an essential deterrent to people playing ‘brinkmanship’: delaying payment of bills until threatened with disconnection despite adequate financial resources. In a letter to his colleague in 1980, a member of the Scottish Economic Planning Department complained that restrictions on disconnection would be “unfairly exploited by some sections of the community to whom it could constitute an active disincentive to pay”. Even the chairman of the Electricity Consumers Council, told one researcher “that most of the people who don’t pay their bills are bilkers and shirkers and almost all of them could pay if they chose.” As evidence, they pointed to the 60% of consumers reconnected to their electricity supply within 48 hours. Similarly, in drawing on images of the ‘undeserving’ and ‘feckless’ poor, government and industry professionals also blamed fuel debt on bad financial management. In 1981, one district manager for the London Electricity Board proclaimed “I’ve yet to meet an innocent customer.” Yet the Secretary of State for Energy Norman Lamont’s refused to support government financial aid because “some feckless people allowed fuel debts to mount up”.
Campaigners countered with evidence that most households disconnected for short periods of time were reconnected only because they had either borrowed money, agreed to unsustainable repayment plans, or redirected money from other essential payments such as rent. They also pointed out that it was precisely those unable to pay who bore the brunt of actual disconnection – including some 18,000 households counted in 1982 as being without supply for over 12 months. In response to anti-poverty campaigners, the industries made some concessions. At the end of December 1980, the boards announced that the Code of Practice would be extended to include consumers who were severely sick, disabled, or blind. However, no matter to whom it was applied, the code was (in the words of Newcastle councillor Hugh White) little more than “bureaucratic red tape to stave off disconnection”. Far from a promise to not disconnect, the Code merely gave certain consumers a grace period of 14 days (later extended to 28 days) to come up with the money or negotiate a repayment plan.
Older housing could be difficult and costly to heat. Original caption: Five-year-old Tracey is bronchitic. Her doctor has written to the housing department about the overcrowding. 9th April 1973. (Photo by Staff/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)
In most cases, debtors attempted to negotiate a repayment plan with the board. Again, success varied. In one study of Hammersmith advice agencies and social service, one third of clients had their offers of repayment refused by the board. Monitoring also showed that consumers often felt pressured to agree to repayment plans beyond their means simply to maintain supply, only to miss a payment weeks later. No longer coming under the Code, and labelled as a ‘bad payer’, these households could be disconnected without further warning. In the PSI’s interim review of the Code, the Yorkshire Electricity Board reported that such cases had come to constitute one of the main categories of disconnections. If a person was receiving Supplementary Benefits, they could arrange with the Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) for deductions to be made from their supplementary benefits to pay towards outstanding debts and cover ongoing use. Aside from not addressing the underlying issue of insufficient income, ‘fuel direct’ arrangements were routinely refused for claimants in insufficient debt, too much debt, or where deductions would exceed 25% of their Supplementary Benefit. The insufficiency of the scheme is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that most disconnected households were in receipt of supplementary benefits.
There was also a broader shift that placed the burden of responsibility on consumers more than ever before, who were obliged to alert the board of their eligibility for these poorly-publicised ‘protections’. Boards could plead ignorance when accused of improper disconnections. Such was the case of a blind man who was disconnected because the London electricity board’s exclusive use of paper correspondence meant he was unaware of the bills, final notices or code of practice. Further North, an elderly pensioner couple, living alone with no savings were cut off by East Midlands Electricity Board for £13 debt. Both received the same stock response that the board ‘did not know’.
Poverty remained high during the 1980s, especially in cities such as Liverpool (above), and fuel poverty was an acute problem for many families. (Photograph by John Stoddart/Popperfoto via Getty Images)
Despite the code of practice, disconnections kept rising and remained high throughout the 1980s. Although privatisation of gas and electricity industries in 1986 and 1990 led to renewed pressure to include statutory protections of poor fuel consumers into the industries’ operating licences, disconnections by British Gas reached an all-time peak two years after it was privatised. Yet disconnections did eventually decline. In the absence of stricter regulations or significant alterations to the Code of conduct, the catalyst for this reduction appears to be the increasing installation of pre-payment meters as an alternative to disconnection. Although coin-operated meters had long been available, the original Code of Practice stated that Boards would consider their use only for consumers in hardship who had exhausted all other options for repaying their debts. In 1980, 77% applications to South Scotland Electricity Board for prepayment slot meters were refused. Boards cited administrative expenses and the risk that poor householders would be tempted to steal from their own meters.
Campaign groups had reluctantly conceded that pre-payment meters were preferable to outright disconnection, as it allowed at least intermittent access to energy. They were concerned this would mask the incidence of hardship, and make it more difficult to lobby for meaningful change. The proportion of domestic electricity consumers on prepayment meters has more than doubled, from 6% in 1981 to 15% in 2019 (plus the 15% of smart-meters operating in pre-payment mode). De-facto disconnection has thus been replaced by the ‘self-disconnection’ necessitated by the climbing rate of prepayment meters installed for debt. Indeed, in 2022, over one fifth of all pre-payment consumers ‘self-disconnected’ for over 24 hours because could not afford to top-up. Much like those disconnected during the 1980s, over 80%) were households who receive welfare benefits, or contain a child or person with a long-term illness. While retaining significant statutory powers, then, boards have shifted the distressing act of disconnection on to consumers themselves. The implications of Growing installation of prepayment meters, with or without a warrant, may have replaced statutory disconnections, but the outcome remains the same: struggling households are left in the cold.
Care or Criminality? 